


kiss me (the world might be ending)

by nessismore



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Failboats In Love, I don't know how to tag this, Kissing, blackglass suggested these tags and i approve, lethal amounts of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 10:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/734461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nessismore/pseuds/nessismore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve's got a habit of kissing Darcy in high stress situations, and only in high stress situations. Darcy wants to know what the hell is up with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	kiss me (the world might be ending)

**Author's Note:**

> Here, have some slightly cracky Darcy/Steve. I don't know why this is a thing that happened, but here you go.

Darcy followed the Avengers up to the quinjet, practically running to keep up with Steve’s longer strides as she went over the blueprints with him for their latest mission. She swiped through the plans on the StarkPad, showing Steve the newest intelligence they had on the weak points in the structure and guard schedule. Tony had all of this already, of course, but Darcy was the one who’d unearthed these latest changes and Steve had wanted to hear it from her personally. 

She’d just finished her report when they reached the quinjet, and she couldn’t resist reaching out and touching Steve’s hand. He wasn’t Steve now. He was Captain America and all business, but she had a bad feeling about this mission and _she_ couldn’t keep her Agent Lewis face on when she was so worried. “I guess I don’t have to tell you this, but be careful, Steve.”

The Captain facade dropped for just a moment as his face softened. He covered her hand with his. “I will, Darcy.”

Before she could say anything else, he brushed his lips against hers in a soft, reassuring kiss that was so unexpected, Darcy froze. She couldn’t think, couldn’t respond, and before she knew it, his lips were gone and so was he. Jane, who’d followed Thor when he’d gotten the call to assemble, pulled Darcy back. Darcy looked at Jane, then back at the quinjet, then at Jane one more time.

“What the _hell_ was that?” Darcy demanded, even though she wasn’t sure why she thought Jane would have an answer.

“Hear that Cap?” She’d forgotten that she was wearing a comm and she heard Tony snicker in her ear. “If Lewis is confused, I don’t think you did it right. It’s called a kiss, agent.”

“Shut it, Stark,” Darcy snapped. She raised her fingers to her lips; they still felt warm and tingly from Steve’s. She’d make him explain when they got back.

Of course, the mission took almost a month, and by that point, Darcy felt like it would have been silly to bring up the kiss again at all. Steve acted like nothing out of the ordinary happened, and even Tony didn’t bring it up again. Darcy chalked it up to adrenaline or some strange hormonal anomaly on his part and tried to put it out of her mind.

—

Darcy headed back to headquarters with four cups of caffeinated beverages balanced in her hands. The worst part of being the new girl was being the go-fer in addition to having to do her goddamn job, and SHIELD analysts were really pissy when they didn’t get their coffee. The good stuff, not the swill SHIELD must have mixed up by the bathtub-ful back at the office. You’d think a super secret government organization would be able to afford to pay some super secret baristas who knew how to make a latte, let a lone a decent cup of coffee.  

A blur of blue zipped past her on the street. She turned in time to see it pause, then double back before she found herself mouth-to-mouth with Steve. Again. She dropped her coffee. Before she had time to process what was going on, he was off down the street again. 

“Seriously?” she shouted after him. That’s when she noticed two seriously bad looking aliens coming into the street. There definitely wouldn’t be time to get more coffee. Ugh. She was coming back with no caffeine and more work. Everyone was going to hate her.

—

Oh God, this was _not_ supposed to happen. Darcy wasn’t a field agent. She gathered intelligence. She compiled data. Occasionally she hacked into other governments’ (and her own government’s) systems. She did not go out into the middle of the action, she did not shoot things, and she sure as hell did not fight next to Captain America and the rest of the Avengers. Well, they fought, and she tried not to waste bullets as she tried to keep from getting killed and from killing Steve, who was closest to her. Captain America. She couldn’t think of him as Steve here. 

At least this time the enemy was human. Well, she _thought_ that was a good thing, since humans were child’s play to Cap and she could at least injure them. She thought back to the watching the last alien attack from SHIELD HQ and how _those_ things had been bullet proof. So at least here, she wasn’t not completely useless. 

One of the HYDRA thugs knocked her to the ground. Somehow she retained hold of her gun and aimed for his shoulder. Her aim was never the best, and she got him in his gun hand instead, which all things considered, was probably better. She scrambled to her feet, eyes searching for anyone coming at her when she noticed one of goons was right behind Steve and was raining his gun to Steve’s head. Not even Captain America could survive that. She shouted a warning even as she lifted her own gun and prayed that she would actually hit was she was aiming for. Steve turned, Darcy fired, and thankfully, the gunman fell. 

She couldn’t even feel relief at the guy writhing on the ground before she saw Steve running towards her. She was knocked off her feet, just as the wall behind her exploded. 

“Holy shit,” she gasped, and she wasn’t sure whether she was talking about the explosion or the impact of her head on the ground. Steve was a heavy weight on top of her, and she was having trouble catching her breath. She looked up to find him braced over her, staring at her intently. She could feel his chest heaving and his heart racing, and then he leaned down and captured her lips in a hard, bruising, holy-fuck-we-almost-died kiss, so different than their first kiss. This was not the time or the place, but she tangled her fingers in his hair and opened her mouth to his tongue. She clung to him, forgetting all about the battle raging around them until Iron Man pulled him off of her. 

“Now’s not the time, Romeo,” Tony muttered. He handed Darcy back her gun. “Go and shoot things, little agent.”

“Let’s hope I don’t miss and shoot you,” Darcy muttered as he pulled Steve back into the thick of the battle. This time they’d definitely talk about the damned kiss, Darcy vowed as she shot things. Er—bad guys. Except by the time she got out of her debriefing—where she was _reprimanded_ , of all things, for being part of the battle when she wasn’t a field agent, and _not_ praised for saving Captain America’s life—Steve had already been called away on another mission.

—

“That went well, don’t you think?” Darcy asked as she got behind the wheel of the car. She buckled her seatbelt as Steve, dressed in his Captain America getup, got in beside her.

“It was good,” Steve said, a huge grin spreading across his face. He’d spoken at a luncheon for the fifty teens who’d won the “Captain America Salutes Teen Scholars” scholarship for Brooklyn high schoolers that Steve funded, and the students had been so excited when Cap appeared, Steve and Darcy had ended up staying well past the thirty minutes slated in his schedule for the event. Darcy had been there because Steve had wanted someone he knew with him. Coulson decided that they could spare her for the afternoon (probably because he hated disappointing Cap), and she loved seeing Steve interact with the kids, so she hadn’t minded at all. Steve had such a big heart. It was one of the things she liked most about him.

“I thought that kid from P.S. 321 was going to go all Coulson on you, he was _that_ starry eyed,” Darcy said with a chuckle. “It was really nice of you to sign that action figure for his little brother.”

Steve ducked his head and shrugged bashfully. “That was nothing.”

“Not to him.” She drove them back to SHIELD headquarters. Since she had him alone in the car, maybe this was a good time to mention the kisses. She was tired of not knowing where they stood. They were friends, she knew that, but friends didn’t just kiss friends for the hell of it. Or maybe they did, and she’d just been hanging out with the wrong kind of people all her life. She was opened her mouth to say something when an explosion lit reverberated through the streets. 

Darcy slammed on the breaks just in time to avoid hitting the car in front of her, and she searched the skyline for smoke or flames. There, to their left, was a smoking building. Weird alien things were sweeping in from the sky, and Darcy groaned. “Not again. What the hell is it with aliens and this city?”

Steve was already unbuckling his seatbelt. He opened his door, then turned to Darcy, who was reaching for her own seatbelt.

“Straight back to headquarters, right?” Steve gave her a stern look, and Darcy bit her lip guiltily. Maybe she had been thinking about following and helping, but they both knew her limits. She wasn’t trained for this. She’d just be in the way. He took her hand. “I don’t think I could survive seeing you in the field again.”

“I don’t know if I’d survive it, either,” Darcy joked, but Steve was looking serious through the mask. “Straight back to headquarters. I promise.”

“Good.” He pressed his lips to hers in a hurried kiss, and then he was out the door. 

“You know, one day we’re going to have to talk about this habit of yours!” she shouted out the window, but he was already gone. 

—

“You can’t go,” Darcy shouted as she followed Steve up to the roof. Once again he was in full uniform, and he was ignoring her. “It’s a suicide mission.”

“I can’t not go Darcy,” he said in exasperation. They reached the door to the roof and he stopped. “It’s a rescue mission.”

“I’m telling you, there’s _no one to rescue_. I analyzed and reanalyzed all of those reports myself. It’s a goddamn ambush.” She poked him in the chest to emphasize her point, and he caught her hand in his.

“What if you’re wrong, Darcy? Is that a chance you really want to take with someone else’s life?”

“I don’t want to take a chance with yours.” This was the closest they’d come to talking about whatever it is between them, and it just had to be before he left to go get his damned self killed.

“I know. If there was another way…but I couldn’t live with myself if there _was_ an agent there, if he or she died and there was something I could have done about it. And I don’t think you could either.”

Damn him. She closed her eyes because she knew he was right. And he wouldn’t be who he was if he didn’t do this. That didn’t mean she had to like it. She felt tears welling up in her eyes and she blinked them away. “You get yourself killed, I’m going to be really pissed at you.”

“Noted.” He pulled her closer and swept his lips over hers in a hard, desperate kiss. She could taste the fear there and it made her heart race. She kissed him back, pouring everything she felt into it and curling her fingers into his chest like it would keep him safe and with her. Steve pulled away and brushed his fingers against her cheek.

“I’ll be back,” he promised, holding her tightly. 

Her shoulders hitched as let out a puff of choked laughter. She pressed her forehead to his chest and held on a moment longer. “At least you didn’t say it with an Austrian accent.”

“You’ll have to explain that one to me later,” he said, kissing her again.

For a moment, she let herself sink into the kiss, and then she pushed him away. “Go.” Pressing one last kiss to her lips, he hurried out to the quinjet, and Darcy tried to assure herself that everything was going to be okay.

—

The Avengers, Pepper, Darcy, and Jane were sitting in the common room at Stark Tower, watching a movie. Darcy sat on one of the love seat with Steve, even though she still hadn’t quite gotten the courage to ask him what their deal was. It should have been easy, but somehow when they were alone, she couldn’t force out the words, “So what exactly are we?”

If she was being honest with herself, she was afraid that forcing him to define it would effectively end things, which didn’t really say much about either him _or_ her, come to think of it. It was probably stupid and insecure, but hey, she wasn’t the only one _not_ saying anything. So she let herself drape her legs across his on the love seat, his hands resting on her knee, and she tried to pretend that not knowing what they were wasn’t really a big deal as they entered hour five of their _Lord of the Rings_ marathon. She was having a hard time paying attention to what was going on with his fingers feathering little patterns over her shins.

Then they got the call about dangerous alien activity in Brooklyn and all of that lovely peace was shattered. Darcy swung her legs off of Steve’s and let him get up. “We’ll be back, safe and sound,” he promised her. He leaned in, and Darcy shook her head.

“Last time you said you’d be back, it took you a month and a hospital visit so saying ‘I told you so’ wasn’t even fun for me.”

Steve grinned and kissed her forehead. “Details. I was back, wasn’t I?” She swatted him in the arm.

“Don’t—“ but before she could finish her thought, he gave her a quick, hard kiss and he was out the door with the other Avengers. Pepper and Jane were staring at her. ‘Oh, don’t look at me like that. I don’t know.”

This battle was shorter and required a shorter debriefing than most. Darcy waited in the common room in Stark Tower for Steve to come back. Pepper and Jane had long since left for their office and lab respectively, and now Darcy stared at the skyline that had quieted hours before and waited.

“We need to talk,” she blurted out when Steve and the others came in, sans suits and armor, and in Bruce’s case, not large and green. Steve froze. Bruce, Natasha, and Clint immediately stepped back out. Tony did not.

“Oh, Cap,” Tony said, patting Steve on the shoulder. “the four most dangerous words in the English language. What did you do? Did you forget to declare your inten--”

Steve glowered at him and pointed to the door. “Out.”

“Do I need to remind you that I own this building?” Tony demanded, hands on his hips. “And that neither of you live here?” 

Yeah, Darcy didn’t care about that so much at this point. “Do I need to call Pepper?”

“I’m leaving,” Tony said with a scowl, “but it has nothing to do with that threat.”

Darcy just waved him off and waited until he left the room. Then she rounded on Steve, who was looking at her warily. Good. He should be wary. She’d had time to stew over their situation while he was gone since Coulson had expressly ordered her to stay where she was and to not go looking for trouble (which was incredibly insulting, because literally, it was just that _one_ time!). There wasn’t anything she could do to help SHIELD from Tony’s computers, so she sat there, prayed for the safety of the Avengers and normal citizenry alike, and she stewed. Yes, stewed. Because this situation with Steve was ridiculous. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared at him.

“What’s with the kissing thing?” she demanded.

Steve blinked at her. “What?”

“The kissing thing,” she said impatiently. “You know, where you try to kiss me senseless before you go and do something stupid. Do you do it so often that you can’t keep track of it?”

Steve stared open-mouthed at her.“I—“

Darcy cut him off, since she’d gotten herself pretty worked up by this point. “Does it even mean anything to you? Is this a thing that you do? You find a girl to kiss before you go off to save the world? Will just any girl do? Is that what’s going on—“

The rest of her sentence was cut off by a mouth hard against hers. She made a muffled sound of surprise before she leaned into him. Oh no, he wasn’t off the hook. And she’d tell him so just as soon as she was done melting into him.

Darcy looked up at him suspiciously when he broke the kiss. “Where are you going now?”

He took a moment to catch his breath, and he licked his lips. “Dinner. With you. If that’s not too presumptuous. I—well—I mean—that didn’t come out the way I wanted it to.”

She wanted to say yes! Absolutely yes! But she wanted answers first. “We aren’t going anywhere until you explain the kissing thing.”

He took deep breath and ran his fingers through his hair. He looked down at the ground sheepishly before peeking up at her. “Would you believe that I’m a coward?”

Darcy crossed her arms. “I’d believe that you’re a dumbass.”

That startled a laugh out of him. “Fair enough. This might sound dumb, but every time the call comes, I think, ‘What if this is my last chance with Darcy? If it is, I want to take this memory with me.’ And so I get up the courage to kiss you, and then I see you again and you’re so beautiful and you act like it never even happened and I just…I lose my nerve, is all.” 

A smile blossomed across Darcy’s face, and she laughed, a self-deprecating, if joyful, sound that echoed through the room. “We’re so stupid.”

Steve looked up at her. “We?”

“Yeah,” she said with a nod. “I was waiting for a sign that kissing me meant something _to you_. Wow, we’re dumb.” 

“We wasted a lot of time.” He took her hand in his. “I like you a lot, Darcy. Would you like to go to dinner some time?”

Darcy grinned, shifting her hand so that her fingers laced with his. “Yes. I’d like that very much.”

“Oh, and Darcy? I don’t have to save the world now.” She was laughing as his mouth came down on hers.


End file.
